A new volume with 17 articles revisits the past and present of the holy places that just like a string of pearls encircle the two-million-strong city of Sofia. The book accentuates the role and social importance of these places and comes across with curious facts and legends related to them.

Holy places in Sofia region: cults, stories, images - this is the title of the recently released volume, the work of a team from the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies cum an Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In it scholars cast light on little known monasteries, shrines, chapels, hermitages and holy springs inside the capital city and in its environs. During the Middle Ages when the city of Sredets emerged as a spiritual center, the number of monasteries in the area reached 120. A few of them have survived to the present day and continue to attract orthodox Christians and other visitors.

The volume's authors are historians, ethnologists, art historians and philologists who unpick topics such as present-day cults for saints, the role of the internet for the promotion of pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain of Sofia, legends etc. In this way we can learn for instance that there is a shrine with a cross in the region of Vladaya that was built in a place linked to an ancient legend. It argues that the monks carrying the relics of St. Ivan of Rila stopped by here. However, there were some events happening and because of them the saint cursed the Vladaya folk never to have accord and to make their living with very hard work.

We can also find a few curious details about The Seven Thrones monastery that has seven chapels dedicated to seven different saints, and also about the Alinski Monastery from 16-17 c. that hosts a busy fair on Ascension Feast every year.

How do present-day Bulgarians think and feel about these holy places surrounding the two-million-strong city blocked in heavy traffic? We learn more from Prof. Albena Georgieva who compiled and edited the new volume:

"Research suggests that people have become more active recently visiting these holy places. It has even become a trifle fashionable but on many occasions visitors have been driven by need. Those who cannot find a cure in the realm of mainstream medicine turn to the holy places and their healing energy. Pilgrim tourism has been growing too, driven by growing interest in Orthodox Christian values and in history at large. One of the articles explores pilgrimage trends via travel notes uploaded on the internet. In them bloggers mostly young people share their experience after visits to the monasteries in the region of Sofia as well as their delight with the stunning natural scenery here.”

In the present day restored monasteries are operational with few exceptions. Their number is forty. However no one has counted and studied shrines, chapels, holy springs and other sites of worship in Sofia's environs.  The volume Holy places in Sofia region: cults, stories, images gives special attention to the cult to healer saints. This is the case with the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian to whom one of the chapels of Obradovo Monastery is dedicated. Sofia residents believed that the chapel is the scene of miracles owing to its healing spring, The Monastery of Tsarnogor is also dedicated to the Holy Unmercenaries. That holy place has been renovated with donations and European financing and has become an important spiritual center of the region.

What kind of readership will the new book attract?

"The volume is both for explorers and general readership”, Prof. Georgieva tells us. “It goes with a CD with photographs and videos from religious feasts at the Alinski and Kladnishki monasteries. The volume includes first-person accounts plus interviews with pilgrims and with priests.” 

English version: Daniela Konstantinova